My Impressions of America

I wasted an hour this morning reading Margot Asquith’s book of observations on America. Unfortunately, it bypassed my spreadsheet that tracks how I found out about the book, so I don’t know what terrible source recommended it. I imagine it was something along the lines of “the voice of an extraordinary and strong woman,” because that part is definitely true. Margot was the wife of Britain’s prime minister H.H. Asquith, and had a popular autobiography that preceded her arrival in America.
It gets off to a promising start, with her railing against traveling, calling most travelers uninteresting. “I like what I have thought out for myself better than what I discover [traveling]; and conclusions arrived at after careful reflection are more enlarging than what is pointed out to you by inquisitive spectators…. there is a difference between curiosity and interest, and I regret to say I am not curious.”
Her boat docks in New York and she’s beset by reporters, her first experience of having to answer the question that would drive her mad, “what did she think about flappers?” She exhaustedly gives a speech that night and it does not go over well, a woman in the balcony saying she’d had enough and storming out. She gets better and is a rousing success in Boston, and even meets an intelligent reporter she names “Bruce” because she forgot to get his name:

He said he did not know what had happened to the spirit of his fellow-countrymen. Whether it was from temporary restlessness–following the chaos of present conditions–or from a native and ingrained lack of reflection, but that jazz, hustle and headlines were killing the soul of the American people.

My main beef with her is her sharp sexism, preferring the company of men and viciously writing up the women reporters she encounters. “When the female reporters begin by saying to me: ‘What, Mrs. Asquith, do you think, with your close acquaintance with the many trends of the working of a woman’s mind, of the modern probability etc., etc.,’ I am reminded of Sir Walter Raleigh’s excellent phrase, ‘Stumbling upwards into vacuity.’ One of these eager ladies, checking her more intelligent male companions, said: ‘Is it true that you are indifferent to the opinion of any living person?'” (Emphasis mine)
She visits Philadelphia and is pissed that they don’t applaud during her speech. She meets President Harding in DC. She sees Detroit and Chicago (